


Fortunate Son (Times Four)

by kita (thekita)



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-01
Updated: 2010-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekita/pseuds/kita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter what the universe, he’s always gonna be the Destroyer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fortunate Son (Times Four)

_Birthday-Verse_

 

It’s a mercy killing when it was meant to be vengeance.

“Are you an angel?” his father asks, and Stephen laughs.

“Did I save you?” his father asks, and Stephen says, “no.”

The dust is settling onto the filthy mattress when the man returns. He is also wrong: missing an arm, no scar on his neck. But he looks out through the same eyes, the same spectacles, and so he knows.

“Connor?”

“Stephen,” he hisses, and punches Wesley in the face. Straddles his waist, presses the scythe to his throat.

He stinks of whiskey and false witness. Even this close to death, he thinks only of the vampire: “What have you done?”

Stephen tugs Wesley’s head back like a pig for slaughter. And with a single quick slice, he makes it all right.

His spectacles join Stephen’s collection. They’re cold, impersonal, and Stephen wishes instead that he’d taken his eyes.

  
*

  
 _Normal Again-Verse_

  
Every night, he comes to her window. Buffy’s room is ten stories high, and she’s been a good girl, taking all her medicine. Still he perches, her fairy-gargoyle dressed in animal skins.

The shadow he casts is familiar, makes her ache.

He smells like death. He smells like love.

He smells like Angel.

“Oh, honey, no one’s there,” Buffy’s mother says.

And Buffy knows what comes next: injections that make her slow, soft shackles around ankles and wrists, too many people with lullaby voices. Soon, she’ll (disappear) feel nothing at all.

Her mother holds out a hand.

Buffy takes his instead. It’s cool and strong in hers.

The window is open, wide as his smile. “Come with me,” he whispers. “We’ll find him together.”

Buffy’s mother screams, because she doesn’t remember. She wasn’t there when Buffy jumped from the tower. When she flew-

And the boy says, “Close your eyes.”

  
*

  
 _IWRY-Verse_

  
He’s bleeding out into the sand, ashes to – he’ll be dust again, it’ll just take longer this way.

“Angel, hold on, you have to hold on-”

Over the sweet shush of ocean, Buffy’s voice sounds far away.

He’s dying in her arms again.

(Always.)

She presses strong, tiny hands over his wound. It’s a futile attempt, nothing can stop the flow of heart’s blood. Her tears burn him the way sunlight no longer can.

“Angel, who was that boy? Why would he do this to you?”

The world goes dark, but she still shines- all he sees is her face, same as the day she plucked him out of Hell.

“It’s ok,” he tells her.

“No. No, it’s not enough time, it’s not-”

He smiles. “It’s ok, Darla.”

She recoils like she’s been hit, but he *has* to tell her.

This boy who’s killed him-

“Darla, he had your eyes.”

  
*

  
 _Home-verse_

  
In a Palo Alto hospital, a six year old boy is dying.

The doctors can do nothing else.

His parents can only wait.

In the hospital chapel, a pretty lawyer approaches the boy’s father.

“If you were given the chance to have your son back, would you take it?” she asks. “No matter the cost?”

He thinks of his wife choosing a coffin for their child. And he says yes.

  
That night in Palo Alto, his wife tucks their son into bed.

“I love you mommy,” he says.

The boy blinks up at her, and her stomach lurches- _wrong_ -

  
(In an LA hospital, a six year old boy wakes from his coma.

“Where’s my mommy?” he says.

The doctors call it a miracle, even if he doesn’t remember that he’s always been an orphan.)

  
It passes quickly.

She kisses his tiny forehead. Of course Connor Rielly's always had blue eyes.


End file.
